We had a lecture from an experienced screenwriter (Robyn Winslow) who told us about how difficult it is for a screenwriter to get work after graduating. She informed us that we should have some other work other script-writing, like script doctoring or translating.
We were then handed copies of a segment of her 1st draft of a script from when she didn’t know what to write. It was called “Minding Gavin”, a comedy. While she sets up the style of the area very well with lots of little visual touches of graffiti, the dialogue isn’t funny. There are no jokes, and seems more like an indie low-budget drama piece. Its very sad.
The quality of story isn’t the point of this, though. The point was the need to proof-read and get script-doctors to find plotholes and things that make no sense, such as having a pizza appear in it, and Winslow’s script-doctor asked when the pizza arrived. Again, this was only a first draft.
We were then handed a 2nd draft of a different segment of “Minding Gavin”. Again, its very sad and there are no jokes, but there is more dialogue. I started thinking that this may not have been intended as a comedy.
We then saw a 3rd draft segment, which looked at one of the scripts themes, which was the euthanizing of small towns. This segment is very dialogue-heavy. It is a re-do of a previous segment, and has more plot being shown.
Afterwards, we were then handed a statistics report of the 3rd draft and a line breakdown of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd drafts. It is definitely for an Australian audience due to its focus on a small country town. The differences between the drafts is very high, which just shows how difficult it is to write a half-decent script, even with a script-doctor.
Robyn Winslow says that the driving force of a script is the characters, or even just one character. A story is told through them, and it can change or evolve because of them, too. When shooting and directing whatever project I choose to be a part of, chances are that creative differences with the writer will mean at least a couple of drafts, or at least a number of re-writes.